Monday, June 29, 2015

I am Will Hammer and I am running for Virginia House of Delegates in the 20th District. I have just ordered an 8 foot vinyl banner and 1000 business cards to hand out at parades and events -- which brings me to my LEAST favorite part of campaigning: asking for money.

I am not a wealthy man and cannot self-finance my entire campaign, so I need YOUR HELP. Please consider donating today to help my campaign. I have a modest campaign budget goal of $5,000. I spent less than that last year in my federal race, so just image what I can do with $5,000 in my state delegate race this year.

I am looking to purchase regular yard signs, large yard signs, pay for booths at festivals and fairs, bumper stickers, and shirts.

If everyone who likes this page would donate $15, I would surpass my goal for the whole year.

ALSO, I will be walking in the Staunton 4th of July parade, so if you are interested in walking, please contact me! We will line up by 9:30am on Thornrose, just beside the park. Thank you so much!

VOTE LIBERTARIAN!

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* CHAIRMAN'S REPORT - ANNUAL CONSERVATIVE SOIREE - JULY 4th - There are a lot of events scheduled for the Independence Day holiday (please see the events calendar below) including The Leadership Institute's Conservative Soiree from 11 AM-3 PM on July 4th at Bull Run Regional Park, 7700 Bull Run Drive, Centreville, VA. The event is FREE, but please bring a favorite side dish to share. Free BBQ, face painting and games for the kids, a bluegrass band and more. To request a FREE parking pass and for the most updated information on the event, please go to www.leadershipinstitute.org/soiree and/or call The Leadership Institute at (703) 247-2000.

Do you know of an event our 30,000+ subscribers should know about? Let us know at (703) 502-0161 or JTParmelee@aol.com. NOTE: Some event details may change after publication, so we recommend you check www.NorthernVirginiaGOP.com before attending.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~We hope you enjoyed this issue of The Northern Virginia GOP AGENDA. Published by Parmelee Associates. Paid for in part and authorized by NorthernVirginiaGOP.com-The Northern Virginia Republican Political Action Committee, a nonprofit not affiliated with national, state or local GOP committees. Not authorized by a candidate. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or for questions, please contact JTParmelee@aol.com or call (703) 502-0161. Feel free to forward this and/or send us e-mail addresses or fax numbers for those you think would want a FREE subscription.

We hope you enjoyed this issue of The Northern Virginia GOP AGENDA. Newsletter disclaimer: Published by Parmelee Associates. Paid for in part and authorized by NorthernVirginiaGOP.com-The Northern Virginia Republican Political Action Committee, a nonprofit not affiliated with national, state or local GOP committees. Not authorized by a candidate. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or for questions, please contact JTParmelee@aol.com or call (703) 502-0161. Feel free to forward this and/or send us e-mail addresses or fax numbers for those you think would want a FREE subscription. Fundraising disclaimer: Paid for & authorized by NorthernVirginiaGOP.com-The Northern Virginia Republican Political Action Committee, a nonprofit not affiliated with national, state or local GOP committees. Not authorized by a candidate. Contributions not deductible for federal income tax purposes. Corporate contributions will be deposited in our state account. Federal law requires PACs to report name, mailing address, occupation and name of employer for each individual whose contributions aggregate in excess of $200 in a calendar year (VA reporting level is contributions aggregate in excess of $100 in a calendar year).~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Americans of faith must prepare for the inevitable: the further erosion of our once precious, constitutionally guaranteed religious liberty. As sexual freedom increasingly trumps religious freedom, you and I and everyone who believes in God's definition of marriage must expect to be targeted.

Those who oppose our biblical view of marriage will now try to silence us on this and other matters of religious conscience.

This ruling isn't a surprise. You see, your Family Foundation team has been preparing for this for some time. The Family Foundation has been working hard to protect religious freedom across the commonwealth in school districts, local communities, and at the state capitol in Richmond. We have a dozen victories this legislative season alone and are now, in light of today's disappointing Supreme Court Decision, preparing to redouble our efforts to defend your religious rights.

Help us advance the strongest possible religious freedom bills in the General Assembly

Strengthen and equip our alliance of state-based family policy and national partners with coordinated strategy and communications. These groups are the key to our success!

Rally the pro-family Virginians whose voices will be needed to pass religious freedom laws. They may not know how to take action unless you help by connecting them directly to their legislators' offices by phone and email.

When you give, you'll bring effective bills to a vote. And then at exactly the right moment, you'll rally hundreds of like-minded Virginians in key districts to pour calls in to their legislators.

So please join with The Family Foundation now  both in prayer and financially. With each $250, $100, or $50 you give now, you'll help us work to protect religious freedom in the face of what is likely to be an onslaught of anti-religious liberty bills and policies from the ACLU, Equality Virginia, Terry McAuliffe and Mark Herring.

Will you stay with us in the struggle for religious liberty?

Will you stand with Americans of faith all across this great nation for a future where your children and grandchildren are free to live their lives and run their businesses according to their faith?

You are subscribed to this mailing list as alexanderofyork@gmail.com. Please click here to modify your message preferences or to unsubscribe from any future mailings. We will respect all unsubscribe requests.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

With the King v. Burwell decision expected to drop in only a couple of weeks, many in the media are whipping themselves into a frenzy over the consequences of vanishing subsidies. Depending on who you believe, between 6 and 7 million people could be affected if the Supreme Court rules that words mean what they mean, and Republicans have proposed several plans to bridge these people gently away from ObamaCare.

But there is another side to a ruling in favor of King that is largely being ignored. In addition to eliminating insurance subsidies from the IRS, the ruling would also clarify that the individual mandate that demands individuals purchase health insurance would no longer apply to the 34 states that declined to set up their own insurance exchanges. Read more here...

This past weekend, fifty-five of FreedomWorks top activist were flown out to our Washington D.C headquarters for an exclusive “Activist Boot Camp” in order to help arm them with the resources, connections, and knowledge to engage in their communities.

The issues discussed ranged from criminal justice reform in terms of civil asset forfeiture and mandatory minimum sentencing, to the effort to eliminate Common Core, to how the grassroots can help put an end to ObamaCare once and for all. Read more here...

With the passage of the USA Freedom Act, many hoped that we had seen the last of bulk collection of Americans’ telephone data, but government never gives up its power without a fight. So when the Obama administration asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to continue collecting data during the 180 day transition period authorized by USA Freedom, we were ready with a legal response.

On June 5, FreedomWorks and former Attorney General of Virginia Ken Cuccinelli filed a motion to stop this data collection on the grounds that it violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and that a federal court has already ruled that the program was illegal under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Read more here...

It’s been difficult not to notice that a lot of states are having terrible experiences with their ObamaCare exchanges. In fact, a recent Washington Post article reports that “Nearly half of the 17 insurance marketplaces set up by the states and the District under President Obama’s health law are struggling financially.”

In a previous post, we mentioned that this fact should hinder attempts from state officials to establish a state exchange in the event that King v. Burwell eliminates the federal subsidies.

Regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision, nothing will change for the 16 states already running their own exchange. Also, Arizona recently passed legislation prohibiting the establishment of an exchange, so that 17 states will not be directly affected by King. Read more here...

Clarence Henderson is a FreedomWorks activist who participated in the Woolworth Sit-In in Greensboro, N.C. in 1960 and is a United States Army Veteran and retired entrepreneur. I was pleased to be able to sit down with him and talk about his experiences and views on empowerment.

**What was the first political cause you rallied for? **

Two years ago, I volunteered with the GOP in Greensboro. I was involved in the Woolworth Lunch Counter Sit-In. On February 1, 1960, Ezell Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan) was in a group of three black men who sat at the Woolworth lunch counter and asked to be served. On February 2, Ezell came to find me in the library of A&T University. He told me what had happened the day before and asked me to participate. I agreed to sit with them at the lunch counter. Read more here...

With members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, under the watchful eye of Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), working on long overdue sentencing reforms, a group of 130 former federal prosecutors, judges, and other law enforcement officials sent a letter urging action on the Smarter Sentencing Act.

The Smarter Sentencing Act (S. 502/H.R. 920) would not eliminate any mandatory minimum sentences, but it would reduce them for low-level, nonviolent offenders by half. The bill would also expand the "safety valve" exception to these sentences for eligible offenders. This would give a judge discretion to consider an offender's circumstances before handing down a punishment, rather than taking sentencing orders from big government in Washington. Read more here...

Last Thursday, the Cato Institute held an event foreshadowing the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Kelo v. City of New London decision and celebrating the release of Ilya Somin’s new book, The Grasping Hand: “Kelo v. City of New London” & the Limits of Eminent Domain. There was an impressive cast of presenters with welcoming remarks by Richard Epstein, keynote delivered by Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) and panelists which included attorneys that represented both sides in oral arguments before the Supreme Court.

The speakers discussed the ruling of the Court, how the Court should have ruled, the public’s response to the ruling and what obstacles to full property rights we still face today. Perhaps the most disheartening topic discussed was what has happened to the property since the Court’s decision. Read more here...

As Ronald Reagan famously said, “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.’” While champions of limited government are in favor of entrepreneurship, do we really want the federal government to decide on which companies to invest in? After President Obama’s announcement that the White House plans to invest in entrepreneurs in the United States and abroad, what should we expect? The Spark Global Entrepreneurship coalition plans to raise $1 billion in private funding for entrepreneurs in the United States and abroad by 2017. At face value, this may seem like a fine idea – but this is actually very bad news. Read more here...

If you want an update like this newsletter twice a week, be sure to sign up for the FreedomWorks Morning Update! The Morning Update is your tool to keep up-to-date with all the threats to your freedom. Sign up here.

A small contingent of Alexandria Tea Party members was on Capitol Hill Wednesday to protest the special treatment Congress gave itself under Obamacare. The protest was one of 500 across 300 Congressional Districts around the country organized by Tea Party Patriots. ATP thanks all who participated, as well as Virginians for Quality Healthcare for joining us. Read news coverage of our protest here -

Anna helped us with our school lunch activism project earlier this year. Now she is running for the Virginia House of Delegates as a Republican in the 43rd District. ATP does not endorse candidates but does support those who align with our core values - limited government, free markets, fiscal responsibility - as Anna does. We greatly appreciate her help in our effort to reach the nation's youth with our message and wish her the best of luck in her race.

It was a "big stick" move to deal with a rapidly changing global political environment. It both addressed our national security and illustrated our ability to project power in protecting our interests around the world.

It is time for the United States to take a "big stick" approach to the current rapidly changing global political environment, in a virtual way. We must control our narrative, as the differences in virtual and physical realities become ever blurred. If we do not do so, whether it is to combat the Islamic State or to illustrate our generosity in foreign aid, our competitors will. Russia is spending millions of dollars to shape international opinion and takes aim at America.

The Islamic State has been able to find the needles in the haystacks out there who may either already agree with their extreme message or the supposedly disenfranchised who may sympathize and be converted to thier cause. It is not enough for the United States to simply track down the potential recruiters via the web, or for companies like Twitter to shut down bad acting accounts. There must be an offensive campaign to overwhelming their messaging.

Consider my failed Congressional primary in 2009. There were approximately 650,000 people in my district with fewer than 30,000 of them voting in the primary. Compare my $20,000 war chest to the eventual winner's $2 million account. He was able to control the narrative and overwhelm my messaging. I was not able to sift through his communications to touch the few who would be voting and I needed to hear my message.

This is one of the ways we must combat extremist like the Islamic State. At the same time we are targeting the online recruiting members of the Islamic State, we must overwhelm the group's messaging, so that their virus does not spread to those easily manipulated who could potentially be turned into "lone wolves" on our soil and elsewhere.

When Israel invaded Palestine in 2009, I was in Sana'a, Yemen. I turned the TV on, only to see Yemen's government and its state-run media exploit that crisis to improve its own image. Commercials showed American and Israeli leaders, then bombs, then dying citizens. Makeshift tents were set up in the middle of the city, where hundreds of chronically unemployed men (there is no shortage of them in Yemen) could sign up to fight against Israel; hundreds of them did. Meanwhile, we had spent hundreds of millions of dollars in aid money in Yemen, over $100 billion in humanitarian aid alone.

Despite President Obama's claims that he has restored respect for the United States around the world, the reality is quite different.

Our foreign aid should form part of what Harvard Professor Joseph Nye calls soft power-and I'm sad to say that right now, we are not taking advantage of what we already give in aid. As a result, anti-American attitudes are probably more common there than they should be.

The U.S. is home to the best marketers on the planet-people wear Michael Jordan T-shirts in the Congo, drink Pepsi in Paraguay, and dance Hip Hop in Haiti. A bit of every aid package should include marketing to demonstrate to people abroad how we are helping them. It seems absurd that we give foreign aid packages to so many without making sure they know whom to thank. Let's use the talents of what is arguably the most American industry ever to let the world know where the help is coming from.

In a rapidly changing world where transnational extremist groups undermine and threaten nation states and America's generosity or perception of prestige has waned, it is time for America to use a virtual "big stick" and once again demonstrate projection of power, our desire for peace, and the ability to control our narrative.

Del. Scott Taylor was elected as delegate for Virginia's 85th District in 2013. He is an author, entrepreneur, Iraq War veteran, and former Navy SEAL. Taylor is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel discussing foreign policy, national security, and military and veterans' issues. He is also a former member of the Virginia War Memorial Board of Trustees, appointed by Gov. Bob McDonnell.www.scotttaylorva.com

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